I'm back, and here's what's new (Patreon)

Hello everyone. I'm Cetol.

I'm back. It's been a while — thanks for waiting.

By the time I stopped last year, I'd been making characters and cards for four years. The first couple of years were genuinely fun, but somewhere along the way my skills stopped improving, and opening Patreon started to feel like "another task to get through." The passion was gone. I tend to go quiet when things get hard, so I didn't say much to anyone — I just stepped away.

This past year, I let myself rest first. Then I started building things back up, one piece at a time: I sharpened my character and face work, went back to my art fundamentals, and learned to write my own code — so whatever material, plugin, or little tool I needed, I could make it myself. I told myself: if I'm coming back, no shortcuts this time.

Now I can finally say it: I'm ready. I can handle the whole pipeline on my own now — head mods, cards, modeling, plugins, post-processing.

Here's the short version of what I built — the full tour is at cetol.me/whats-new?utm_source=patreon&utm_medium=post

• A material system of my own, so each character keeps the look and feel of her source game inside KKS. Endfield, Wuthering Waves, and a HoYoverse look (Zenless Zone Zero) are done; Girls' Frontline 2 is in progress.

• Dedicated head mods for the characters that need them — mainly for expressions, which KKS's base face can't really carry.

• My own plugin system — free for everyone, member or not. An atmosphere / color-grading plugin with one-click styles, a physics-optimization plugin that keeps the frame rate steady so I can afford more detailed physics, and a stack of smaller quality-of-life fixes. (One rule about reuse — it's near the end.)

• A real website — cetol.me. This one has a story, so let me tell it properly.

The website exists because the old delivery system was, frankly, me. You subscribed, you sent a DM, and at some point — hopefully soon, sometimes a day later — I woke up and sent your card by hand. "Is this the latest version?" was a genuine mystery, because there was nowhere to check. I did have a reason for doing it by hand: back then it doubled as my anti-piracy layer. But the cards now carry a proper watermark system that does that job far better than sleepy me ever did, so nothing was left stopping the obvious fix. I sat down to build a simple download page… and kept adding one more thing to it until it turned into a full member site. Log in with Patreon and everything is just there — cards, plugins, updates, always the latest version, the minute they ship. Hand-sending used to eat 30–40% of my time. That time goes back into the work now.

And as of today, it's all live. Two brand-new characters, Arcane and Liino, are up right now, and the three cards I built while tuning my materials — Lucilla, Velina, and Zhuang Fangyi — are in the past catalog. The Cetol FREE Plugin Bundle is free for everyone, and so is every card's outfit mod. You can browse all of it on the site without an account. If you're a member, log in at cetol.me/?utm_source=patreon&utm_medium=post — this month's tickets are already in your account; just click a character to claim her. How the tiers, tickets, and packages work is written out here: cetol.me/news/comeback-details?utm_source=patreon&utm_medium=post

To everyone who backed me during the quiet year — thank you. You stayed when I wasn't around, and I don't take that lightly. I'm sending a small thank-you: a gift month, matched to the tier you were on back then. Watch your Patreon messages over the next few days.

One rule I need to state plainly, about the plugins: free means free to download and free to use — everyone, everywhere, in any of your own cards and scenes. It does not mean free to take. Please don't re-upload the files anywhere else — link to cetol.me instead, so people always get the current version. And any commercial use — selling them, building them into paid packs, shipping modified versions — needs my permission first. By default, the answer is no.

One thing to be upfront about: this first batch is KKS-only. KKS runs on a newer engine, and the same effort simply goes further there. I haven't dropped KK — once the plugins are more stable I'll start adapting them for KK — but if you have strong feelings about which should come first, tell me in the comments.

What's ahead: I'll keep pushing image quality, keep streamlining how I build mods so new characters come faster, and chase the big goal of this comeback — characters in KKS that can talk with you and move on their own. AI has come a long way in two years. I'm not giving a timeline, but however far I get, I'll show you.

Honestly, all of this was mostly usable back in February. I just kept polishing — this time because I wanted to, not because I had to. That also means I'm shipping a lot of new work at once, and there will be bugs I never run into myself. If something's off, use Report on the site (fastest) or message me here. As long as you report it, I'll do my best to fix it one by one.

It's really good to be back. I hope you like what I made.

— Cetol